


All We Ask

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2010-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:33:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you were five, you met your father for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All We Ask

**ALL WE ASK**  
SUPERNATURAL  
Sam/Dean; John/Mary; Dean/OFC  
 **WARNINGS** : AU; underage

  
I

When you were five, you met your father for the first time. He was a tall, gruff man with shadows underneath his eyes, spider-webbed veins crawling across the backs of his hands. You remember the strong grip he had on your shoulder when he first came up to you, you remember the sound of his voice, even now, dark and whiskey-laden deep. You remember the way you had to crane your neck to see him, the way he never bent down on one knee to talk to you like all the other adults did.

He said, “Hi, son.”

And, even if you tried, your lips wouldn’t move to say anything back. Even if you desperately wanted to call him Dad, even if you wanted to say to him the things you’d never said before to anyone.

Your mother had stroked your arms before letting you see him, had kissed the top of your head in that worrying way she always did. She wore a short, white dress that day, you remember because the sun had made her look like she was glowing, her tan skin and beautiful blonde hair, curled in ringlets because that’s what her boyfriend at the time had liked. You remember because at the party, your fifth birthday party, your father had spilled red punch down the front of your mother’s white dress when she reached over to slap his cheek.

He was drunk. Your mother never wanted to cause a scene, but always did when she fought with your father. Later, this will be something you come to know very well.

The present your father had bought for you was still in his hand when he left, when your mother screamed at him to leave, so you never got to rip open the blue wrapping paper to find out what was inside, not like all the other presents that you received that day. The ones that were lovingly wrapped by your friends’ mothers, the ones with scissor-curled ribbons and blossoming bows.

Later, you’ll find it in the back of your father’s closet, the blue wrapping paper still intact, and you’ll curl back the dried tape and you’ll peel open the flap and you’ll find a baseball in a glass box, signed in your father’s scratchy scrawl. Later, your father will tell you that this is the first baseball he ever threw in the minor league, the first ball that he saved just for his son, just for his little boy.

After the party, your mother had told you not to worry, that your father wasn’t like that all the time, that he really did love you just as much as she did, even if he never told you, even if you never asked. She said this without looking at you, her hair still wet from the shower, hanging at the nape of her neck and dripping down her robe. She smelled like lilacs, smelled like roses, as she rubbed lotion into her skin from the plastic jar on the bathroom sink.

You liked to watch her do this, liked to watch her hands move in the rhythmic motions as her fingers curled around her elbows, her knees. You liked to watch her because when she would look up, her reflection would smile at you big enough in the mirror that you could actually feel the warm, tight fist in your belly open and close again. You liked to watch her because she would blow you kisses and maybe, sometimes, just maybe, you could feel them land on your skin, butterfly soft against your cheeks.

After the party, your mother burned the white dress that she wore, stoking the stained fabric into the bonfire in the backyard, stepping back at the cloud of smoke billowing up and away from the pile of wood. It would have never come out in the wash, she explained, her hands around your shoulders. She never could have worn it again anyway, she had told you, her lips on the top of your head.

Later, your mother tells you that this was the night she had told her boyfriend that she was pregnant, that she had been for three months, and that the little bump that was growing inside her stomach didn‘t belong to him. She had burned the dress for lots of reasons, but mostly because she never wanted you to see him yell at her when he threw clothes and shoes and oil-stained papers into shopping bags and left. He did this when the both of you were in the backyard, slamming cabinets open and shut and squealing out of the driveway in his truck, the tires screeching on the pavement.

He had been your mother’s fourth boyfriend. What you remember about him is small and insignificant. He was a car mechanic and he came home smelling like grease and looking dirty, his hands black until he washed them for dinner, leaving fingerprints on the soap in the bathroom. You remember the way he gently kissed your mother. You remember that she had loved him in her own way, in the way she didn’t love you or your father, who had been your mother’s first love, who would always be your mother’s first love.

You remember that he was nice to you, that he never left you empty handed on Christmas or your birthday, that he taught you how to swing a bat, how to hold a fishing pole. You remember that he never raised a hand to hit you. And, at the time, that’s all you could have asked for.

Not that night, but sometime later, you’ll find out that your mom is pregnant, but only because she can’t lie anymore, only because there comes a point when oversized t-shirts and loose-fitting pants can‘t hide the stretch of her belly anymore. She tells you that it’s a boy, she tells you that you’re going to have a brother, but she doesn’t tell you that he will be a small, wrinkled mass of pink flesh that will scream and cry in the night for someone to hold him. And she doesn’t tell you that you’re going to love him more than your mother or father or even yourself, more than life itself, peering over the white crib to reach out your hand so he can wrap his little fist around your finger.

Not that night, but later, she tells you that you’re going to have a brother that will need you, that will look up to you, that will love you just as much as you love him. She doesn’t tell you that, above everyone else, your brother will be your highest priority.

When the baby is born, he looks exactly like your father. Your mother names him Sam.

  
II

Sam is a baby for exactly six years. This is as long as you can give him before your mother decides that you’re old enough and Sam’s old enough to spend more time with your father. At this point, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. At this point, your father has wormed his way back into your mother’s good graces, despite all the yelling and name-calling and throwing of the good China out of the dining room hutch and onto the living room wall. Your mother still thinks she loves him, you can tell by the way she presses her hands against his chest to smooth down his shirt, the way she leans into his kiss.

Sam doesn’t mind your father as much as you do. In fact, you think you’re the only one in your family that can’t see past his slick-tongued lies and the stolen sips from the flask he keeps in his jacket pocket. In fact, you think you’re the only one who actually remembers what it was like before you even met him, when it was just you and your mom and the growing baby inside of her that you never knew about.

You watch your brother on the nights your father takes your mother out. On the nights they leave for hours at time, don’t come back until the morning light is just peeking underneath the crack in your door, Sammy tucked tight against your side, his mouth on the crook of your neck, his fingers curled into a fist that grips your shirt. They come back tired or wasted or both, your mother leaning against your father for support, gripping her high heels in both of her hands because she always takes them off in the car, because her feet are always swollen and red from dancing. They come back laughing sometimes, stumbling always, your mother saying, “Shh” with her finger to her mouth until your father stops bumping into things, until he slips off his boots and tiptoes to their bedroom and falls, heavily, into a deep sleep that will last most of the day.

And then she’ll come into your room and stand in the doorway for a few moments until her vision clears, and when she finally stumbles over to the bed she’ll kiss your forehead and Sam’s forehead, her breath smelling like that sweet wine she likes, her fingers warm on your chin. She’ll move Sam’s arm off your stomach, but she’ll be too exhausted to pick him up and put him in his own room, so she’ll just let him be when he rolls back into your side, snuffling quietly in your ear, his fist opening and closing the grip on your shirt.

You always pretend to be asleep whenever she does this, whenever she comes back like this, partly because you don’t ever want to see her like your father, drunk and glassy-eyed and slurring her words, but mostly because you don’t ever want to see her face when she looks at you and at Sam and realizes that he’s always needed you more than her, that he’s always gravitated towards you more than her, loved you more than her, ever since the day he was born. You know, but don’t see, that this breaks her heart every time.

You know, but don’t see, that she will never be able to bear this, even if she never questions it, even if she gives into it, even if she lets go of him.

Those nights that your parents are away, you and Sam play video games and watch TV and build forts out of pillows and move around your father’s old Army men, making them dance and shoot guns and explode. You let him eat all the candy he wants, just short of what will make him sick, and he goes to sleep in your bed instead of his own, curls up around you because you’re better than all the stuffed animals in his room, because you’re warm and breathing and alive.

You give him baths and you make sure he brushes his teeth.

You read books to him and you sing songs to him, the old ones from your father’s tape collection, the ones that he would play for your mother in the Impala, the open windows and her laughter as he pressed hard on the gas pedal, pressed harder.

Later, on your seventeenth birthday, your father will hand you the keys and he’ll smile and he’ll say that he’s been waiting to give them over ever since you were born, ever since the first time you looked up at him in the hospital and reached out for his hand, warm in your mother’s arms. You’ll only have the car for two weeks before you crash it into a tree on an old dirt road, a bottle of Jack in your lap, going sixty and taking turns too fast. Your arm will be in a sling for two months and you’ll have two new scars where the doctors had to stitch you up, two new scars from where your forehead hit the steering wheel, but you’ll spend every single day working in the backyard to bring the car back to life, using the money you make in the local grocery store to pay for the spare parts.

Your father will never mention it again, but, later, when he looks at you, all you can see is the disappointment that he’ll have for the rest of his life.

  
III

In your senior year of high school, you accept a scholarship to the local college. This is about the same time your father gets fired from the bottling plant, the same time you start playing football, not so much because you the love the sport, but more because you like running, you like the feel the of the ball in your hands, you like the sound the crowd makes when you score a touchdown. More because you like the way it feels to be part of something, to be on a team.

Sam comes to watch you every practice, every game, sitting in the stands with his homework, smiling and waving every time you turn his way. The girls who come to watch their boyfriends think its cute, and sometimes they’ll keep him company, let him point out mistakes in their chemistry papers, because, at thirteen, he’s still the smartest person you know. He learns their names, and he gets their phone numbers, and he charms them with his soft-spoken calculations and theories, but, in the end, it’s you who captures his attention. In the end, it’s you he follows home, letting you wind an arm around his shoulders and steer him towards the parking lot.

Your mom is working nights as a desk clerk in a law firm, so when you come home still in your dirty uniform, cold sweat pasting your hair to your skin, the smell of dirt and grass in your hair and on your hands, the house is usually quiet, usually still. Sam will bound into the kitchen and your father will either be passed out in front of the TV or still at the bar, depending on whether or not your mother has had a chance to kick him out of the house that day.

Nights when its just you and Sam, you forget that you live here with anyone else. Sam smiles more and you smile more and he will look up at you and you will brush strands of hair back from his face and he will lean into your hand. And its peaceful and its yours, the few hours you get to talk to each other alone everyday, the few hours you get just to be with him and no one else.

And, no one ever says it, but this is one of the reasons why your father drinks so much.

You hear them one morning before you leave for school, your mom and dad, as you hitch your backpack higher up onto your shoulder, as you stand just outside the living room, your hand ready to turn the knob on the door.

Your father says, “I saw them again, sleeping in the same bed.”

And your mother says, “Sam has nightmares.” That’s true, but all three of you know that it’s never about that, that that’s not everything.

You hear your father breathe through his nose. He’s angry, but not angry enough to do anything about it. Besides, you can smell the whiskey from here.

Your mother says, “It’s nothing, John.” But it is, it is something, and all of you can feel it, even if Sam doesn’t know what it is, even if you don’t want it to happen, not to him, not when he can still get out and do something with his life. Be a doctor or a lawyer or something, something normal.

Your father says, “Dean should be out chasing girls around, not with his brother all the time.”

Your mom is folding laundry, you can hear the shuffle of clothing as she folds them into neat little squares, places them on top of all the others in neat little piles. She pauses for a long time before she says, “Maybe if you weren’t drunk all the time…”

He doesn’t hit her. He would never hit her, but he does swipe at the stack of empty beer cans on the table, and they clatter to the floor hard. You jump just like you know your mother jumps, your heart racing with adrenaline. Next, they’ll start throwing dishes at each other, the glass and porcelain shattering against the walls, and you’ll skip school to come home early before practice, just so you can clean it up before Sam sees it. You’ll be lucky if no one calls the cops this time.

Your mother doesn’t raise her voice, but the venom is there, still between her teeth, as she says, “Whatever is going on between Dean and Sam is none of your goddamn business, John Winchester. You have no right to talk about it. You have no right to even question it.”

“I‘m still their father,” he says, and his voice is a low, even growl.

Your mother throws something down on the table, you can hear it hit with a bang. She says, “If you want to get a job and stop drinking, then you have the right to be their father. But, until then, you’re just a man living in this house, and they don‘t have to follow a goddamn word you say.”

This is an argument they’ve had many times, as many times as it’s taken for your mother to kick your father out of the house, half-heartedly throwing all of his clothes and old books out on the lawn. This is an argument that you used to shield Sam from when he was little, covering his ears with your hands and rocking him against your chest. This is an argument that you used to shield yourself from, loudly singing your father’s old songs until you couldn’t hear their voices anymore, couldn’t hear your father’s fist pounding on the bedroom door for you to stop.

Your father says, “It’s not natural.” His voice is thicker than usual, laced with alcohol, but also something else, something you’ve never heard before.

You leave before you can hear your mother’s response, slamming the front door shut as loud and as hard as you can.

That night, you skip practice and come home with a girl on your arm. Her name is Ashley, and she looks more like your mother than is probably healthy, but she makes your father happy. He smiles when you introduce her, shakes her hand for a little too long, and keeps winking at her over dinner, sliding the mashed potatoes and corn down the table with appreciative sidelong glances. He claps you on the back after dinner when you stand up to drive her home, and even with the sad, tearful looks Sam is giving you, your heart still surges at the warmth that approval brings.

You park in front of Ashley’s house just before eleven and you let her pull you into the backseat of the Impala, let her pull your shirt over your head as she hikes up her skirt and slips a thumb in the waistband of her panties, sliding them down her thighs. When you fuck her, you bite down so hard on your lips so as not to breathe out Sam’s name that you break the skin, your blood smearing all over her mouth.

Afterwards, she smiles and reapplies her lipstick in the rearview mirror, leaning over to kiss you quietly on the lips before she goes. “See you tomorrow,” she says, but you both know it wasn’t as big a deal as it should have been, that you’re not going to become her boyfriend or anything, that she will go off to college and find a guy that she could actually settle down with one day, and that you’ve never been that guy, that you’ll never be that guy to anyone but your brother.

You come home smelling like sex and you take a long, hot shower, passing your father before you get to the bathroom, but not looking him in the eye. Sam’s light is still on, but you don’t go to see him, mostly because you don’t want to see him curl away from your touch, repulsed. Mostly because you don’t want to see him feign sleep when you go to talk to him.

That night is the first night that Sam doesn’t sleep in your bed.

  
IV

Sam is sixteen the first time he kisses you.

The night it happens, your mother has gone to spend the weekend in the city with a few of her friends from work, in hopes that there could be some potential for promotion, and your father hasn’t been home in a few days, most likely staggering from bar to bar and sleeping on park benches downtown. You’ve been working and skipping classes to take care of Sam, even though Sam hasn’t needed to be taken care of for a few years, even though he can hardly stand to be around you anymore, not since you discovered the way to keep your parents happy, the way to lose yourself from the thoughts and dreams and fantasies you keep having.

You’ve never been really honest to yourself, anyway, so it doesn’t bother you much.

You order a pizza and start setting the table, laying out paper plates and plastic cups and folding the napkins lengthwise beside them. Sam is watching you from the couch, watching your hands move, and you want to ask him what the hell he wants, but he gets up and stands behind you before you can even open your mouth.

“Dean?” Sam says.

And you turn to look at him, turn to say what, but he grabs your face first, presses his lips hard and harder against yours, his chest fitting flat against your chest. He’s just taller than you now, so he has to lean down slightly to catch your mouth, but he doesn’t mind and you don’t mind, even if your thoughts are screaming at you to stop this. He slides his hands down from your face, slides them over your shoulders and down your back, and he pushes you closer to him, tighter, as you open your mouth to let in his tongue. He’s kissing you like he’s breathing you in, and you’re happy to let him, sliding your hands up and into his hair, pressing tight and tighter until you’re not sure that you haven’t actually melted into each other, haven’t actually become one person.

Sam breaks the kiss to take a breath and you lean your forehead against his and you’re breathing hard and he’s breathing hard, and you want to say something like no or we shouldn’t be doing this but you’d much rather get back to the kissing part instead.

You say, “Sam,” just in case he might be having second thoughts, but Sam knows what this means more than you do, because he’s against you again, kissing you even harder than before and you’re definitely sure that your lips will be bruised in a few hours, swollen and red and absolutely worth it.

Sam pulls back from you again, kissing you once more and then twice more, and says, “Are you sure?” His voice is hopeful and maybe a little bit sad, maybe because he thinks you could say no, maybe because he thinks you don’t want him like he’s always wanted you, as much as he’s always wanted you.

And, even if you should stop this right here, right before it gets out of hand, before you go too far, this is something you’ve wanted ever since you realized the love you had for your brother was more than the love you had for your mom, more than the love you had for anyone else, and that it wasn’t the same, would never be the same. And you’ve never been able to say no to Sam, not even for this.

  
V

You leave the night Sam turns eighteen, the day after his high school graduation, packing bags before the ceremony, worn, black duffel bags that used to belong to your father, before he left for the war and came back broken. You pack clothes and a little food and all the money you’ve saved since working as a clerk in the grocery store and, later, as a fry cook in the diner around the corner from your house. You had dropped out of school the year before, the scholarship money drying up ever since you let your grades slip, ever since your father started coming home drunk, which was never a surprise, and mean, which was.

Your mom never collected bruises, but that’s because you were such a perfect punching bag, after your father figured out that there weren’t gonna be any more girls coming home with you, after your mother found Sam in your bed, curled naked around your waist.

Sam had cried until he couldn’t cry anymore, but that was more because your mother refused to look at him or you for the next two weeks, refused to speak to you, refused to even touch you. You never cried, but you held Sam as he did, rubbed his back and told him it was all going to be okay, even if you knew it wasn’t, even if you couldn’t promise that you wouldn’t have to leave.

Your father would drink and your mother would lock herself in her room until she had to go to work, and here you were trying to pick up the pieces, trying to assure them that it really wasn’t what it looked like, it really wasn’t what it seemed. Your lies went unnoticed, mostly because they knew and you knew that you were just trying to save Sam from this, that, even if you couldn’t live in the house anymore, if you didn’t have a family, Sam might still be able to live a normal life.

Sam didn’t like this plan, even if you told him over and over again that it was for the best, that it was how things had to be done. You were afraid to touch him underneath your father’s watchful eye, afraid your mother would burst into tears if you so much as looked at him, so you kept your distance. Sam would try to sneak into your room at night, but ever since your mom walked in, you’ve kept the door locked tight, pushed a chair against the knob, because you know and Sam knows that neither of you would be able to control yourselves.

Your mom has to go back to work, though, and your father needs the bar like he needs to breathe, so Sam would stay with you in your room for those few hours you could be alone and you’d think and you’d plan, Sam’s mouth on yours whenever you’d get hoarse from talking so much. You tell him that you’re both going to leave, that you’re both going to get out of there, even if your heart aches when you think about leaving your mom, when you think about taking both of her children away from her, but it’s the only thing you can do without causing more damage than what’s already been done.

You know and Sam knows that it’ll be much better if you get out and go somewhere where you don’t have to pretend not to love each other, where nobody knows that you’re brothers. You know and Sam knows that your parents have never been good for either of you, even if you’ve never known anything else, even if you’ve only ever loved them.

One of Sam’s friends knows of a place up north where you can rent a little rundown ranch house with the money you have, a place that’s not too far, but far enough that you won’t have to worry about running into your parents. A place where you can start over, fresh.

“Sounds nice,” you say when Sam’s friend tells you about the place. “Sounds good.”

You pack up the Impala and you leave your mother a letter that she’ll probably never read, not if your father gets to it first, not if she decides to throw it away instead, disgusted even by your handwriting. You never say goodbye to your father, but only because he doesn’t deserve it, even if he wants it. He’s never said that he loves you, even if he wasn’t supposed to, even if fathers are just like that, and those half hour sitcoms tell more lies than morals about how they’re supposed to act. He’s never told you that he’s been proud of you, even if he’s not supposed to, even if fathers are never supposed to be proud of their sons.

Sam leaves a voicemail on your mother’s phone, where he says he’s sorry and he tells her that he knows he’s disappointed her, but that it’s what he wants, it’s what he needs, and he’s always felt this way, so you’ve never done him any harm in indulging. He’s smart enough to make the goodbye an apology and a fuck you all in one. You’ve always envied that about him. He doesn’t leave your father anything, but then again, your father’s always done the same.

Sam walks out of the gym before everyone throws up their caps, before everyone erupts into chaos, walks out right after he gets his diploma, and races over to you, still in his gown. He tears it off and throws it in the backseat and you smile bright at him and he smiles back, leaning over to kiss you, your hands flexing on the steering wheel.

“Happy?” you say. It’s more about this, this running away, then the graduation, but Sam ignores that and shakes his diploma at you before throwing it in the backseat with his clothes.

“Very,” he says. He kisses you again, and then again, deeper each time, his hands still on your face.

“Ready to go?” you say when he pulls away. Both of the duffel bags are in the backseat, filled with all of your clothes and Sam’s clothes and Sam’s books and all the things your mother has given you, your father has given you, mostly because they’re the only things you have.

Sam takes one last look at the high school, where all the students are just now filtering out, takes one last look at the few friends he’s made, and turns back to you, smiling. “Ready.”

You press the gas pedal hard, the engine roaring at your touch.


End file.
